I am sitting by the ocean:

watch smoke signals drift idly from my parted lips/ i am the navajo princess.

you could be the boy who listens in at the nursery window but like everyone else you are far away, and today i kind of like it. there is magick in being under the same sky. there is beauty in this lonely freedom.

...and there is peace. god, is there peace.

god shall be spelt in small letters today: god of the small things- earth, silence, sea, sky. we all move with the rise and fall of his breath, the contours of the sacred pierced chest.

barefooted, crimson nails, bikini bottoms and a loose shirt, just inches from the waves.

ringed fingers resting gently against the glass of the seashell shaped table, moodring shifting hues between purple, vague amber, and mermaid blue; depending on how my thoughts move.

diet coke, un notes- strewn absentmindedly around:

education doesn't matter.

not today. there are more beautiful things to learn today.

Well, hello there, 5AM. Fancy seeing you at this hour!

Time to kick some last-minute ass.

I got bitten today.

Grr.

... See- I don't have anything against dogs. I like dogs. I like dogs quite a lot.

When I DON'T like dogs is when they skulk around and put their noses in bins and run out of gates and tear each other to bits over the one girldog in the house- which is pretty much all mine have been doing recently.

But yeah, I got bitten trying to tear my dogs apart so they wouldn't tear each other apart and it's fine, I'm fine; but still.

Couldn't we have reared cats? Or, like, unicorns, or something?

My sister's applying for SOTA this Thursday. We talked about it on the planeride home and I hope she gets it, if it's what she wants; truly I do.

... still, though. I felt a little pang of something, definitely.

I remember when I wanted to enrol in an Arts school, yeeeears back. My dad's mouth went down at the corners and my mum's foot started tapping against the tiles and no matter how I pleaded they said no. I was always the one with the good grades (okay, disclaimer: back then. now not so much) and the invitations to school events and (as much as I resent this) nobody quite equated "arts" with "bright future".

So I saved my theatrics for drama club (and relationships, har) and my singing for the shower, and knuckled down to getting to that elusive (but!) Great Glorious Future of mine everybody else but me could see.

Sometimes I wonder.

But I don't regret anything in Life, I don't think, not even the messups and the major catastrophes I have too often triggered. Everything for a reason.

And I hope she gets in. Sincerely, I do! I told her, "remember this, darling: you're not just auditioning for yourself. You're auditioning for the both of us" and it's true. And if she does get in, I will do everything in my power to help her.

... Life epiphanies aside. Today's been pretty productive, all things considered.

I finally started on my H3 Lit- which is a big Wow and to be commended verily, verily. I still wish I hadn't chosen Kerouac's On The Road, though. As much as I love the guy, and love the book... I mean- what was I thinking- the guy was HIGH ON DRUGS.

Have you ever tried analyzing the literary magnificence of a guy high on drugs?

It's like listening to and trying to make coherent sense of what your friend says over the phone when you pick up her call at 4 in the morning and she's had one too much tequila shots. Only this time it's a 289-page-long drunk phonecall.

O well.

I'm a Lit Kid, and I still love this book, and therefore I WILL somehow make sense of Kerouac's substance-induced magcifinence. I mean magnificence.

Speaking of Lit... I've been trying to write something for the upcoming Lit Up competition. No such luck, though- the Muses aren't being my BFFs today. Not with this particular theme, which happens to be "Colour and/or Move". I assume they mean "movement", but okay.

... Colour? I could think of a thousand things to write about colour, each one with you as their warm canvas- but each of them cliched, overused, tired; and no way no how am I going to submit Cliches. "My business is to create", said Blake, and spewing cliches isn't creating. It's doing a disservice to whoever ends up reading the pseudo-trash I write, because it's plagiarism and it's lying and yes EVERYBODY lies anyway, most/least? o f all writers and artists and actors but if I'm going to lie, I'm going to come up with a newer, fresher deceit than "the dog ate my homework".

so I'm not going to write that your eyes still remind me of lakes in the summer. or that your hands felt like a father's.

I'll spin you into a mountain and write about avalanches; weave the you-character into the cosmos and write about life truths at large so nobody will read your name in my ink.

and then I'll randomly paragraph all of it, give it a glibly ambiguous title and tell them it's a poem.

plan A?

I think so.

List #107- Things To Do:

1) Let go and forgive

2) Play it like a smart girl

3) Continue starting on my H3 Lit

4) Convince self that something somehow of History revision has been retained and will magickally put itself to use during Friday's exam

5) Aim to pass Math. We'll pull it up to an A/B by A Levels, oui?

6) Wear my g33k glasses for an extra boost of Studyishness

7) Thank God for the love I have been given

8) Make a conscious effort to reply the texts of people who matter, even though I hate iPhone's AutoCorrect

9) Run and like it

10)Remember that it is only Monday and that it is never too late for new starts.

^ if this was Christmas, this is what it would look like to me.

Me, announcing as I burst into Mum's bedroom this morning: "... Hi. I have had the singularly worst night's sleep in the history of the world."

Mum, rolling eyes: "... You and your italics."

Let's get one thing straight.

I am not the kind of person who suffers from amnesia.

I climb into bed, curl up under the sheets, check my alarm clock about twelve times (ocd compulsion) and do my little ritual of repeating "Six. Colon. Fifty. AM. Alarm. On." about the same number of times because I am paranoid I haven't set my alarm, even though I blatantly have-

but once I've settled down; I'm pretty much lost to the world in a matter of minutes.

I am not the kind of person who "can't sleep because I keep thinking of things". I have learnt the good art of Compartmentalization: sweep it off, and leave it for tomorrow. Sleep comes first.

...but not last night/this morning.

It's not like I was even thinking of things. I mean- I was, kind of, but not majorly. My mind wasn't racing, or anything like that, I wasn't worrying, wasn't pondering... I was just Existing.

And still, for some reason, I couldn't fall asleep. Not at all. And when I can't fall asleep and it starts getting late; I also start getting edgy (and not cool-edgy; I mean nerves-edgy).

I also started getting That Feeling (...you know; THAT one) I get when I start thinking that the whole world besides me is asleep or uncontactable, and it was awful- just little me in my little drifting sailboat, bobbing in a sea of dream sepia with all my ghosts moving in slow motion under the water like malignant selkies.

Which is why a tiny, hovering light appeared on the frightening, dark expanse of ocean when a certain Toni Nicole Jackson FB Walled me at the exact moment I felt like breaking into tears (I know, mature), with a random but thoroughly uncannily-timed "*soulsisterly hug*".

The thing about Toni and I is that we can go without talking for ages- but somehow the bond is there, always, always there; and somehow or other we always end up sending each other love when the other needs it most, even though we're not consciously aware of the other's Time Of Need.

I drifted in and out of fitful little sleep jerks; until I woke up at slightly past 5AM...and couldn't get back to sleep after. I just lay there feeling the clock hand tick steadily up my spine, and my mind was just...grey. And this thought occurred to me, but I pushed it away and focused on trying to let myself fall back to sleep.

I did, eventually, for about an hour and a half, and dreamt strange dreams.

When I finally woke up past a half-decent hour, I sent off an inquiring message and discovered that: - yes. Was indeed the case- you had been suffering, halfway around the world, and I had felt it.

It disturbs me deeply, at the same time that it moves me with the same intensity- that it's still there and it should go, it should go, it will.

I wonder if you've ever felt anything when I was in pain.

And you#2? there's this quote from Looking For Alaska when she goes, "Don't you know who you love, Pudge? You love the girl who makes you laugh and shows you porn and drinks wine with you. You don't love the crazy sullen bitch."

Only your name's not Pudge, it's not love, and I haven't watched anything past M-18 with you.

--

It hasn't been all doom and gloom, though.

I'm too tired now to blog in detail about all the wonderful things that have happened today, I will when I have upped my sleep quota; but for now- here is a List of them.

List of Things That Made Today Wonderful:

1) Reading the sonnet that Jaime's knight in t-shirt and jeans wrote for her. It was exquisite, and old world, and brought memories, and made me smile.

2) Toni's soulsister hug kismet

3) Running into the sulin serio store and perching on the high stools with Di, amidst all the jewellery and feathers and clothes, and dabbing glitter tattoos onto her face

4) Spending the day with Lisa and Lyn (iggy sisters!) studying in Starbucks and generally being semi-productive

6) IGGY Sister Connexions, failed photography attempts, and Caribbean colours

7) Junie's text message correspondence: hot pink shirts and thinking happy thoughts! best advice I've had all day. "think about something happy. Not in a shallow ____ happy way. I mean a deep one. it works."

Goal for the remainder of the day: Be deeply happy.

And it will work.

my current fb status: "deeply, amazingly, irrevocably Loved. (golden, golden, golden...)"

...and it's true! it's fucking true.

and I don't usually swear, and people usually use "fucking" as a crass vulgarity- but this time I use it as a kind of revelation, and in a completely new, wonderful, crazy escalating sense of the word.

Today, I have been swathed in words and warmth. They've just been pouring in, and I think I know now what the Bible means when it talks about milk and honey... I'm lying in a pool of it, drugged and dazed and content as a newborn, and my skin is dripping with the great golden wetness of this insane feeling.

to the people to whom I am speaking:

I Love You.

I Love You, I Love You, I Love You-- and I am capitalizing "love" and "you" the way Di does, because those are such sacred, such special words and YOU are sacred and special and You all mean the world to me (just because I'm 18 and have an exuberant tendency to speak in impassioned italics doesn't mean I exaggerate when it comes to things that matter)

...It's not even the big things.

It's the little things: the chipped mermaid blue on my fingernails, the glitter in the corner of my ear, the memory of skin, the words from beautiful people with bare hearts that flooded my fingers, the thought of sunday, the promise of wednesday, the ability to stand against people who have hurt you and say "...no."

all these things, and more. watch the lips of nighttime touch you as you stand by the shore; lift your broken shoulderblades; unfurl the tired people into swans silhouetted against an infinite horizon;

spread slowly, slowly, slowly with the music rising from a vibration to a humming to a child's song to the rising swell and crash of the ocean which moves into a rhapsody a melody a gospel choir and ever more and louder a rushing a rolling a stampeding of powerful water into the inlands and from the top of the mountain it rises into a drumbeat a cacophony of cymbals the war cry of a generation that will rechristen itself Love and which builds into a mighty roar that is joined by all the things that move under the ocean and the wildest of the beasts in Africa and the deadliest of the angels above the sky and under it

and you, in the heart of it all, glowing and spreading and expanding and scintillating and within you is swelling the to-come of the love, love, love, lovvvvvvve, the GREAT GOLDEN BOOM----

I haven't written here for a long time.

I know.

I haven't updated my FB status properly in ages, either (o the gauges we use to measure our 21st century lives)- I used to, and often- maybe because of some desire to be heard, or some need to feel like I was marking down some form of progress...kind of like Jack and Jill. Trail of skittles in a candy forest.

But these days, everything has been happening so fast- everything and nothing, really, because that's what's been happening. I am simultaneously living some of the best days of my life at the same time I am wasting away my youth.

New favourite mind polaroid: hanging out at Sogurt with the ol' gang after lessons. Because we're too edgy to study in school and too tired to do something edgier. I don't mind, really. I've realized that I LIKE laidback- yeah, the pulse and the strum and the t-t-t-throbbing's all well and good and I still get a rush from the colour; but for the most part... I like just leaving us all on cruise mode. Sweet tongues and tired conversation and familiar faces- give me those any day.

So a backtrack of my day thus far...

Last night: phone conversation with my Di-est of Di's. which was nice, although I got tired at the end and started to drift. I love how she can talk about almost anything and everything-- and such Passion! ...kind of like the flowerchildren's answer to Winston Churchill.

Woke up at 5ish... I need to remember to get coffee. Even coffee doesn't work for me any more, now, though- which blows. I mean- this is the Worst Possible Year for caffeine to lose its effect on me. I get sleepy at 10pm now! ... i feel like I'm 8 years old again.

Met Erik and I got into the grocery cart and we wheeled around the grocery store getting breakfast/lunch/whatever, food is good at all times and generally getting in people's way but we looked happy enough for them to smile at us instead of give the usual Glare of Consternation ("young people these days!")

found a random forested hill (not quite Arcadian, but nice enough) and lay there with cherries and salmon and soda and talk of sleeping trees.

I read some of The Secret History aloud, and it lingered in the air like some sort of sylphmist...but heavier, as if with some darker weight. I still love that book, and it still gives me shivers with all its talk of dionysiac ritual and bellowing bulls and wild torches and queer college kids with eyes like hostile deer.

it's odd. Like someone said- there are days that are gorgeous in their own right, but layered on with ghosts and echoes.

I've learnt to live with the phantoms- I don't mind them. and I laugh a lot more often, and a lot more genuinely. Still, though, when I fall silent like I do sometimes and clasp my booted knees to self, eyes wandering into the distance... I wonder if he/people notice.

...thennn after missing about 5 Bus Number 75s, we finally headed to the Science Centre (attempt at Boring Date). The one place in which I can actually sort of stand science and technology shizz = the Singapore Science Centre. I played with echo tubes and headphones and pretended to drop beats like a dubstep dj and felt generally both kidlike and very cool.

Forces of Nature was also a pretty good movie and even more epik on the ginormous IMAX theatre screen-- but after about the 123098320948th shot of volcano blast + billowing smoke + lava flumes (sorry, am a History Kid, not a Geog Kid)...it started getting marginally boring and we ducked out of the cinema.

the rest, as they say, is History. ;)

In summation, Attempt At Boring Date = Fail.

and now I am absolutely exhausted! ...goodbye, Math Revision. It was nice getting to know you.

I'll be more productive tomorrow. Promise.

love, inner Singaporean.